In case anyone is interested, over at my blog I have something of a tutorial on how I make my kids' show poster illustrations. Interestingly, the tutorial took almost as long as the image.
DUDE. FAN ART.
Also (and unrelatedly), I feel slightly sick. Possibly (well, definitely) related to Project Lester. More later.
I was looking at my "recent entries" the other day, and came to the chilling realisation that my journal is BORING. Basically, it's just automated Twitter updates, and nobody really wants those. Do you? I don't know. I'm a bit confused.
The other thing is that they don't really tell you what I'm doing, because, naturally, when I'm doing something, I am not posting to Twitter, which probably violates Twitter's Terms of Use or something. I tried to set it up so that I could pay exorbitant international SMS rates for the privilege of letting the internet spy on me, but the response was a tide of gibberish and high-end ASCII, and I couldn't be bothered investigating.
So, instead, you're forced to wait for me to tell you what I've been up to (you have been waiting, right? RIGHT?), information with which I have, of late, not been entirely forthcoming. Which is to say, I am a slack bastard, and would like to take this opportunity to remedy this unfortunate lapse in sociability, if only I could work out what's been taking up all my time.
I've been work-working, for sure. There's always stuff there to do, and particularly now, where deadlines for a major project just got condensed from four months to about two weeks, in a kind of cruel inversion of that law for which I've just spent fifteen minutes looking for a reference, which says that any initial estimate should be doubled and moved up to the next unit of measurement, so that half an hour becomes a day, three days becomes six weeks, and so on. That sentence wasn't nearly as snappy as I'd intended. Anyway, it means lots of emergency plane trips.
I pulled out of The Graduate because the "bunch of parts" turned out to be "a ten-minute cameo and some crowd scenes", which didn't seem a lot for three evenings a week of rehearsals. At this stage, I don't think I'm going to audition for Othello, either, and MuSoc's not doing anything, so just like that, I'm really not doing a lot with University theatre this year. Feels weird, especially when you start bandying around meaningless (but factual) hyperboles like "for the first time this century".
I have been carrying on with my writing. The Magic Island is very nearly a draft (I just have one more scene to tidy up); perhaps after that I will try writing something for grown-ups. Apparently, from early samples, my editor is concerned that I am putting too much thought into the writing process, and as a result, the script so far isn't nearly as terrible as she would have expected. Which is kind of a compliment wrapped around a knuckle-rapping ruler to soften the blow? Something.
I have also been dancing again, and it seems to have taken root this time, because I am going to three classes a week now: the 'beginners' class because they need men and I need practice, the 'improvers' class to learn new moves and technique, and a kind of baby performance troupe that Donna is putting together, where we are learning a routine and everything. From this, I have learned that I really do have tiny, stumpy legs, which has been kind of a devastating blow to my self-image, which has been slowly recovering ever since high school. Anyway, the teachers seem to think my technique is coming along well, and that my confidence is increasing commensurately, and for my part, I find that three days between lessons is a long time to wait. Still hard: being a guy in almost any social dancing situation means you have to basically be choreographing the whole time, which you'd think I'd be good at with my improvisatory background. It turns out, though, that it's more akin to solo improv than you'd think, so bridging and wimping are real killers. Hmm. Perhaps I should investigate this more: I've managed to (at least partially) weed out these habits in my improv, so concerted application could see results here?
Anyway, looks like another meeting. Woo.
